


Let the Wild Ones In

by Hagar



Category: Power Rangers Wild Force
Genre: Cooking, Domestic, F/M, Food, Gen, Multi, Post-Canon, rainy day, team fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 18:02:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2591003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unplanned team dinner on a rainy day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Wild Ones In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gingayellow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingayellow/gifts).



> Beta by Lucy.

Cole had been glancing at the front door for half the afternoon. Alyssa wasn’t sure if he even noticed. She did, though, just like she noticed when Lana’s tail twitched or when Buttercup started patrolling the length of the small house. Cole was like their live-in animals this way, tuned in to more senses than five. Alyssa didn’t draw his attention to it; she just got in the kitchen and got to work making - soup, she decided. Soup was good on a rainy afternoon. She pulled on of the boxes of frozen broth from the freezer, and prepared the vegetables while that thawed.

An hour later, Cole came into the kitchen with a crease across his forehead that cleared as soon as he saw that she was already cooking.

The rain grew stronger as they cleaned the kitchen together. It’s been raining all day - all week, really. The season was like that. The wind was stronger, too, but if Cole heard anything in it, Alyssa couldn’t tell yet.

The bell outside their door rang as someone pulled on it sharply then let themselves in, closing the door behind them with no particular gentleness. Predictably, it was Taylor’s voice that sounded a second later: “This goddamned weather -”

Alyssa went to greet her friend. Taylor had at least dressed for the weather - her clothes were dry under the jacket she’d peeled off and was hanging on the rack. Her boots were splattered with mud, but her socks would be dry underneath.

“Hi, Taylor,” Alyssa said, getting on tiptoe to hug her.

“Hi, Alyssa,” Taylor replied, returning the hug. “It smells amazing in here.”

“I had advance warning,” Alyssa said with a smile, and Taylor rolled her eyes. It’s been almost two years since they returned their morphers, and Cole didn’t lose his team-sense even one bit; they were beginning to think he never would. “Where _is_ jungle boy?” Taylor asked.

“In here!” Cole called from the kitchen.

“Do _not_ tell me you are not trying to bake _again!_ ”

Alyssa left them to bicker and went to pull on a clean sweatshirt instead of the one she’d cooked in. Cole was a good cook, but a terrible baker. He had excellent senses and could flavor a dish perfectly without tasting it once, but baking required following directions exactly and Cole just couldn’t do that. He and Taylor were arguing whether she was any good for that when Alyssa got back.

“Out of the kitchen, everyone. There’s nothing for any of us to do here for a while, and there’s a perfectly good living room over there.” She watched the lines of Taylor’s body as she flopped down on the couch and tried to make nice with the cat, who stepped on top of the couch’s backrest and was pacing back and forth, tail held high and meowing loudly. Taylor just had to try and get Lana to like her, and the cat knew how to make the most of that.

Taylor’s shoulders were pinched, and she looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. “Bad day or a bad week?” Alyssa asked as she sat down.

“More like a bad year.”

“Oh, come on, Taylor.”

“I mean it.”

“But you love flying.”

“I love flying, and I love the service, but I have had it up to here with grown men acting like it’s still fifth grade, and with the whole -”

“But you said it’ll get better after the first year,” Cole he said, back from wherever he’d gone to. Alyssa noticed the specks of rain on his face.

“I thought it would, and I guess it did, but - did you seriously just let the storm in?”

The sound of rain and wind was louder than it had been before, and it wasn’t the front door that was coming from. “Looks like we’re having more than one dinner guest,” Alyssa remarked. She pushed herself up. “I think I’ll call Danny and invite him and Max and Kendall over, too.”

“Those three still together?” Taylor called after her.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Cole replied reasonably.

“I don’t know, that arrangement just seems unstable unstable to me.”

“So how many times did you and Eric break up and got back together in the past - oof!”

Alyssa ignored the sounds of a pillow fight - or maybe tickle fight, she wasn’t entirely sure. Someone had just picked up the phone at Danny, Max and Kendall’s.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Kendall.”

“Alyssa! How are you guys?”

“We’re good, thanks. Listen - Taylor’s here and Cole’s let the wind in, you guys want to come over?”

“That’s an excellent idea. Danny put up a casserole earlier, you’re a lifesaver.”

Between Danny’s inability to not cook in bulk and Max’s twitchiness at throwing food away, Kendall was always struggling to clear up space in the deep-freeze. “Maybe he started developing Cole’s senses,” Alyssa teased.

“Or maybe he loves feeding people as much as you do,” Kendall replied promptly. There was amusement in her voice where once there wouldn’t have been. Both Max and Danny had relaxed a lot over the past couple of years; it was all right to poke fun at Max’s abandonment issues and Danny’s fretfulness, now.

Alyssa laughed. “All right. We’ll see you.” She headed back into the living room. “All right, guys -” She stopped mid-sentence. There was a scruffy figure standing silently behind the couch.

“You shouldn’t leave the door open,” Zen Aku said. “You don’t know who might come in uninvited.”

Taylor twisted around, but Cole was unperturbed. “You’re not uninvited, the door was open” he pointed out. “Merrick changing into something dry?”

“I should hope that he is.”

And Merrick would get Zen Aku one of the good towels, too, so Alyssa didn’t have to worry about that. “Danny, Max and Kendall will be here soon,” she announced to the room. “Taylor, please don’t feed Lana string.”

“I’m not _feeding_ her string,” Taylor protested.

“It’s not going to hurt her,” Cole said.

“Well, I don’t like seeing string sticking out the other end of my cat later, all right?”

“She’s a cat,” Merrick said as he came down the hall.

“That’s what I said!” Cole exclaimed.

Merrick handed a big towel - fluffy enough to handle wolf-spirit fur - to Zen-Aku, who held the towel as if he’d never seen one before. “Thank you, but the water will not harm me.”

“Dripping on Cole and Alyssa’s floor is still impolite,” Merrick pointed out.

This was why Alyssa let Merrick handle Zen-Aku.

“And you smell like wet dog,” Taylor added.

And this, Alyssa though with a sigh as the conversation devolved into another minor skirmish, is why Taylor was never left in charge of anything social.


End file.
